QE…D: Why Printing Money will end badly for the US

You may have heard the news, the European Central Bank has started up the printing press. They are soon to print upwards of €60 Billion a month. The crowds of economic pundits have collectively cheered. Ireland stands to enjoy significant near term benefits, but at what cost?

They speak of lower government borrowing costs for new debt, by lowering funding costs and thus the hurdle that projects must meet to become viable. They believe our exchange rate will fall and our goods will be come cheaper abroad. US products and services will be flying off the shelves, etc. Well, it is an absolute nonsense. Yes there will be short term benefits. Any time you give a liquidity jolt you temporarily relieve pressure. But the longer term risks are far, far greater, now that the act of QE has been taken. Essentially the technocrats have short circuited the capitalist system which continuously prices risk based on perceived repayment risks and cost of funds. This is a road to ruin as returns become obscured by official and politically motivated credit flows.

They will argue that deflation is a threat and must be tackled early before it takes hold. This is a smoke screen. The deflation we are experiencing is spotty and multi faceted and is primarily being driven by lower oil prices which are a global phenomena, not a purely European one. Secondly oil prices have already begun to stabilize and if anything are likely to drift higher from here. Don’t get me wrong deflation is a very dangerous condition and can lead to a vicious negative feedback vortex to a state of depression. But we are no where near that level of risk or type of deflation.

The thing is it is being sold as a low risk, one way bet. Worryingly, there has been no talk of the actual cost or the ramifications of this new measure.

So who pays? Someone has to, you can not just create money out of thin air. The answer is “we do, you and I”, in the form of a devalued: currency, diminished savings and devaluing pensions.

The ECB was always going to to launch Quantitative Easing whether it wanted to our not. Once the Fed, BOJ, BOE launched their programs in 2008 it was only a matter of time. We are in a era of global competitive currency devaluation were desperate governments must devalue currencies in order to spur domestic growth by improving the value of exports.

The problem with QE or money printing is it is a like a Pandora’s box. Once it is opened it can never be put away again. There will, now, always be an easy way out of every economic issue. All interested parties will now be able to eye this short term financing tool as away of solving short term issues. The Euro will likely morph into the Lira over time.

QE is not actually the creation of money, not in real terms. What it is is the reallocation of the monetary pool from those that have a share to those that do not. All they have done is to devalue the Euro’s held by duplicating and allocating the new Euros to central banks. The Central Banks will in turn buy junk assets off commercial banks and government bonds all in return for cash.

The hope is that the banks will lend the new cash to businesses who will employ people and in doing so add productivity and value to the economy, increasing bank earnings and taxes and wealth.

But the banks will not do that. They will hold the money….

In short what we are seeing is the wholesale capture of the monetary system by special interests and the mass confiscation of wealth from pensioners and savers to governments and government proxies. I fear that we have just passed a monetary Rubicon that may eventually undermine the very basic social contract of our capitalist system: work hard and you will prosper.

It will take time for the effects of this to be felt but the gates have been well and truly opened and from now on we are only as strong as our weakest political masters at their weakest moment. Those actors will surely plunder this monetary tool….

Author: David McElroy

David Allen McElroy has served as a journalist and a chaplain to hospitals and nursing homes. He continues writing on the world-wide web and has much archived in the forum at BreakingAllTheRules.com. He has a B.A. in Bible from Fresno Pacific College. David stands for Truth, Justice, & Liberty in Christ's Love!
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